Leaving school

[Ramses II CP]

You need to get some perspective on the problem and take the long view of the solution. First off, everyone gets bullied, a large part of being in school is learning how to adjust to it, defray the social costs, and incorporate yourself into the group structure. People who say they didn't get bullied simply conformed well enough socially that the word teasing, or even joking, better describes for them the behavior you're experiencing as bullying. It's all a part of the same system.

I agree with a lot of the other posters here that you should not be afraid to fight. If someone pushes you, push back. No matter if you win or not you'll respect yourself for it in the long run, which is more important than any one fight. In my own experience having fought just a few times in school I was not physically bullied afterward.

On finding perspective, I recommend reading. Either novels which explore the problem from a more internal view (Lord of the Flies can be a good starting place), or works of philosophy for a broader examination of the nature of social pressure. In this direction I'd recommend the same things I would for a starting student of politics, Hobbes (Leviathan), Hume (A Treatise of Human Nature), and Marx. The problems you are learning to deal with run through society from top to bottom, and it's better to figure out now how you want to deal with them than to put it off and have them continue to trouble you in your adult life.

A longer view of the problem and it's solution will help you realize that what you're going through right now, although it feels very important and serious, is both utterly unimportant and not at all serious. Once you get through school, and no matter which solution you pursue, or even if you pursue none of them, you will get through it, it will be your choice whether or not you ever again see any of the people who loom so large right now. You can shed them like a bad habit and never look back for the rest of your life.

Let me see if I can sum up that hodgepodge up there:

1. Seek to understand the system that produces the behavior, not the individuals that exhibit it. Individuals aren't the real problem, they're just a symptom of the problems inherent to human society. If you can see the patterns that produce the behavior you can learn to control it, or at least avoid it.

2. Find a coping mechanism and stick with it. If you're attacked, fight back.

3. Life goes on, don't sweat the small stuff, and similar platitudes to the effect that things will get better, you just have to endure these bumps on the path.